State of Science :: Commentaries
"Redefining Sustainability: From "Greening' to Enhancing Capacity for Self-Renewal"
August 2008
Author(s): Fred Kirschenmann
{This piece first appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of "The Networker," the electronic newsletter of the Science and Environmental Health Network.}
"Going green" seems to be the new sustainability watchword designed to save the planet. The question is: if we all go green, will that get us to sustainability?
A typical dictionary definition of sustainability is "to maintain," "to keep going," "to keep in existence." As a broad overview that is a useful definition, since it calls into question exactly what it is that we want to maintain.
In today's discourse we generally view sustainability from a quantitative perspective. How can we maintain or improve crop yields? How can we maintain the growth of the economy? How can we improve the energy efficiency of our vehicles so we can continue transporting goods from one part of the world to another in the face of rising energy costs? How can we increase the cod population to maintain our seafood industry?
Both environmental and commercial sectors have been captured by this approach to sustainability.
More recently we have added the "greening" component to this quantitative perspective. Recognizing that we are reaching certain thresholds that could fundamentally change the functioning of the planet, we are beginning to focus on improving efficiencies, reducing our green house gas emissions, switching from fossil energy to renewable alternatives and recycling more of our wastes. On the surface these seem like laudable activities, but will they lead us to sustainability?
Inspired by the insights of ecologists like C.S. Holling, a new professional society has emerged during the last 15 years called the Resilience Alliance. Following Holling's description of natural systems and how they function, [1] the Resilience Alliance has concluded that this quantitative approach to sustainability is "based on false assumptions. In a world characterized by dynamic change in ecological and social systems, it is at least as important to manage systems to enhance their resilience as it is to manage the supply of specific products." Using the quantitative approach, the Alliance claims, "We have assumed that we could manage individual components of an ecological system independently, find an optimal balance between supply and demand for each component, and that other attributes of the system would stay largely constant through time." [2] Given how both social and ecological systems function, that is a fundamentally flawed assumption. All social and biophysical systems are constantly changing.
The basic message from the resilience thinkers is that doing more of the same -- new technologies, greater efficiency, more control and command, more intensification, more single tactic strategies -- without addressing the resilience of systems will not lead to sustainability. A central problem is that the kind of efficiency that leads to optimization tends to eliminate redundancies -- the key ingredient of resilience. Additionally, the achievement of such efficiencies tends to cause rebound effects. More fuel-efficient cars inevitably lead to more driving.
So the kind of greening that pushes the pedal to the metal a little harder -- more efficient technologies, better command and control, input substitution -- ends up creating the problem we intended to solve. We delude ourselves into believing that working smarter will solve the problem but more often it simply reinforces the problem, since we have not approached it from a dynamic social/ecological perspective.
The central issue here is that we can never control whole systems, nor can we totally control any part of a system in isolation. Consequently, while greening may bring about desirable short term results, it will never lead to sustainability. Our world is a complex adaptive system which is interconnected, interdependent and constantly changing. Accordingly all systems are unpredictable and proceed in a nonlinear fashion. In the end we can never hold a system in an optimal sustainable state. We can only design systems to enhance their capacity for self-renewal.
Sustainability from a resilience perspective operates at two levels. All systems (biophysical and social) proceed within a certain structure and function. Given a certain degree of shock or disturbance, any system will cross a threshold that pushes it into a new structure and function. A recent Associated Press article by Deanna Martin, for example, described the kind of "disturbance" that recent flooding in Indiana caused for Jim Lankford, a farmer who raises corn and soybeans 30 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The current "stable" form of agriculture that most farmers in the corn belt have evolved to is monoculture corn and soybeans, leaving large swaths of soil vulnerable to soil erosion. The unusual amount of rain that fell in a short period of time caused the river that flows by Mr. Lankford's farm to erode "a new route for itself during June's flooding" leaving ditches with "12-foot banks at the edge of some of Lankford's corn fields" and large swaths of crop and soil washed out of his fields. If such flooding continues in coming years (which is likely as a result of climate change) these fields will clearly "cross a threshold" that will of necessity push these fields to a different kind of structure and functioning. [3]
From the perspective of resilience, therefore, sustainability comes into play in two ways: 1) designing a system so that it is not as likely to cross into a new threshold -- that is, from one state of equilibrium to different configuration, and 2) designing systems so that if they do cross into a new threshold (which, over time, all systems will) they are sufficiently robust so that they reorganize themselves quickly into a new structure and function that continues to provide the services required. It is this second resilience role that makes maintaining diversity and redundancy so critical. Only sufficient diversity and redundancy will enable systems to retain their capacity for self-renewal.
Of course, maintaining redundancy and diversity incurs a cost. And it is one of the reasons we seldom consider this approach to sustainability. It sacrifices a certain degree of efficiency and therefore incurs costs that we, in our industrial economy, are reluctant to accept. Furthermore, it is difficult to assess all of the costs and benefits of dynamic systems. We can never accumulate sufficient precise knowledge to predict them. How does one assess the costs and benefits of preparing for a "500 year flood" as opposed to the cost of ignoring it in the interest of greater efficiency? And in our industrial culture if you can't prove that costs outweigh benefits you don't dare interfere with the market.
This may be one of the more compelling reasons for adopting the precautionary principle.
It seems to me that this is where some of the prescient wisdom of Aldo Leopold is instructive. Leopold reminded us of two important realities with respect to resilience that we have largely ignored, but that seem essential if we truly are interested in sustainability.
First, he wrote that it is futile to calculate the value of conservation "wholly on economic motives" because "most members of the land community have no economic value" yet they are vital to the stability and integrity of the whole. [4] For example, Niles Eldredge writes in Dominion: Can Nature and Culture Co-Exist? that most of us might be in favor of exterminating termites from the face of the planet, yet termites, because of their symbiotic relationship with spirochete bacteria, are one of the few creatures that can digest cellulose. Consequently, we humans are absolutely dependent on termites for a huge portion of the recycling of the world's biotic material. "No recycling, no ongoing life." (1995:163)
We now also know that each biotic community is so complex and dynamic that it is impossible to determine which species are essential to its sustainability. Consequently, using a cost/benefit analysis as a basis for judging the value of sustainable practices is a fool's errand. A good example is the Canadian government's decision in the late 1990's to organize hunting expeditions to slaughter half a million harp seals to replenish Atlantic cod populations. They had concluded that because harp seals are cod predators, killing harp seals would reduce the predator pressure on cod allowing the cod to thrive. What they failed to recognize was that harp seals were also directly connected to at least another 150 species, many of which also eat cod, and that the seals also hunt and eat many of those 150 species. Owing to the complexity of this situation there was no way to predict the effect. It may be that killing the harp seals actually ended up further reducing the cod population.
Second, Leopold recognized that we could not "preserve" the biotic community in any given state of equilibrium. Since biotic communities are dynamic and interdependent they are constantly in a state of change. Consequently, conservation perceived as an activity to preserve things in their "natural" state is also an exercise in futility.
What we can do, however, is to understand and preserve the biotic community's capacity for self-renewal, and that, according to Leopold, requires the nurturing of an "ecological conscience."
A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity. [5]
Nurturing that concept of conservation is essential to any quest for sustainability.
[1] Holling, C.S., 1973. "Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:1-23.
[2] Walker, Brian and David Salt. 2006. Resilience Thinking. Washington DC: Island Press. xi, x.
[3] http://wire.jacksonville.com/pstories/us/20080727/310351196.html
[4] Aldo Leopold, 1949. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford University Press. 210.
[5] Leopold. Op. Cit. 221
Frederick Kirschenmann is Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.
